MakingHistory

First meeting to discuss Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass. I was much more impressed with the quality of both the writing and the ideas than I had expected to be. We cover most of the first section in this talk and spend some time on the themes of gifts, thankfulness, subjectivity, wild strawberries, and nut trees.

This is the final meeting of the discussion of Adrian John’s book, which we had on August 31st.

The first unit of my Fall 2024 US History 2 course, titled "Capital and Labor".

Primary Source Excerpt

We discuss the first and second chapters of Adrian Johns’ recent book. Some of the topics include the late-19th-century panic over the exhausting effects of “unnatural” reading and neurasthenia, other technologies (of both acquiring knowledge and making notes) and their advantages and disadvantages, saccades and thought, the strange misuse of the incorrect theory or recapitulation, and the general weirdness of how close reading science was to eugenics and social Darwinism.

In this talk we cover the third and fourth chapters of Adrians Johns' book. The things that stood out to me were more about the social importance of reading rather than the research technologies and data collected. There was a profound anxiety that an American public that wasn't literate would not be up to the challenges of the 20th century. There's an explicit connection here to Mortimer Adler's idea of the Great Books helping people prepare to be better citizens, and Johns actually mentions Adler in Chapter 4. To watch a video of this conversation, visit https://open.substack.com/pub/danallosso/p/science-of-reading-meeting-3?r=i937&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

After a couple weeks break while I moved into my apartment in Saint Paul, the Saturday Book Club reconvened to begin discussing Adrian Johns’ 2023 book, The Science of Reading: Information, Media & Mind in Modern America. Although I had originally been a bit skeptical, I’m enjoying this book. We discussed languages and reading, the particularity of the reading experience, a bit of book history, the fact that this was a COVID book, Jacques Barzun, Eric Weinstein, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Kuhn, Michio Kaku, and the problem of creating collegiality in a remote and increasingly asynchronous learning environment.

Our first book club meeting, to discuss David Graeber and David Wengrow's book, The Dawn of Everything, in December 2021.

A brief description of how I used to work as a grad student, processing books in my little study carrel at UMass and building Tinderbox "trees" of historiography. I've since moved on to MarginNote 3 and Roam, but I'm still thinking about visualizations. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danallosso.substack.com/subscribe

This is an audio version of the first chapter of my Open Textbook, US History II: Gilded Age to Present. You can read along at https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/ushistory2/chapter/chapter-1/

Source: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (1886), II, 483-496. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/436/mode/2up  

Source: Elizabeth Hyde Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands (1893), 82-129. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/444/mode/2up  

Source: General William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs (1875), II, 171-90. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/428/mode/2up  

Source: Daily Sun (Columbus, Georgia), October 13, 1863, quoted in Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People's History of the United States.

Source: Anna E. Dickinson, What Answer? (1868), 243-257. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/376/mode/2up  

Source: James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (1896), 385-395. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/372/mode/2up  

Source: James K. Hosmer, The Color-Guard (1864), 187-195. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/264/mode/2up  

Source: George Washburn Smalley in New York Daily Tribune, September 20, 1862. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/346/mode/2up  

Source: Mary A. Livermore, My Story of the War (1889), 86-96. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/220/mode/2up  

Source: Jefferson Davis, in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Fourth Series (1900), I, 104-106. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/188/mode/2up  

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (1894), I, 657-669. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/202/mode/2up  

Source: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War (1887), 47-55. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/182/mode/2up  

Source: Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the late War between the States (1870), II, 279-299. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/164/mode/2up  

Source: Senator John Sherman, letter to William Tecumseh Sherman, The Sherman Letters, 1837-1891 (1894), 85-88. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/162/mode/2up  

Source: Speech of Horatio Seymour to New York Electoral Commission (1876) quoted in John Bigelow, The Life of Samuel J. Tilden (1895), 84-9. https://archive.org/details/lifesamtilden02bigerich/page/84/mode/2up  

Source: Almira Russell Hancock, Reminiscences of Winfield Scott Hancock (1887), 152-157. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/504/mode/2up

Source: "Battle of the Little Bighorn, Narrated by an Indian Who Fought in It", by Two Moons in  McClure's Magazine, September, 1898.  http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/twomoonslittlebighorn.html

Source: Hilary A. Herbert and others, Why the Solid South? or Reconstruction and its Results (1890), 61-69. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/500/mode/2up

Source: House Reports, 42nd Congress, 2nd session (1872), II, pt. 1, 48-49. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/494/mode/2up  

Source: Henry Wilson in Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 40th Congress, 3rd session (1869), 153-154, February 8, 1869. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/492/mode/2up  

Source: Henry Varnum Poor, Annual of the Railroads of the United States, 1869-1874 (1869), xlvi-xlviii. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/514/mode/2up  

Source: Samuel J. Tilden, Writings and Speeches (1885), I, 399-407. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/474/mode/2up  

Source: Henry McNeal Turner, "On the Eligibility of Colored Members to Seats in the Georgia Legislature" (September 3, 1868). http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/mcnealturnergeorgialeg.html

Source: Thaddeus Stevens in Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st session (1866), 2459-2460, May 8, 1866. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/482/mode/2up

Source: Edwin Lawrence Godkin, The Nation (1865, 1866), I, 209-210; II, 110-173. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/448/mode/2up  

Source: "President's Policy" by Andrew Johnson in the Daily National Intelligencer, February 23, 1866. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/468/mode/2up  

Source: Horace Greeley, The New York Daily Tribune, February 1, 1865. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/464/mode/2up

Source: Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature, held in Jackson, October, November and December, 1865 (1866) 82-93, 165-167 http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/mississippiblackcode.html

Source: Report by General Carl Schurz, Senate Executive Documents, 39th Congress, 1st session (1866), I, No. 2, 13-40. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/452/mode/2up

Source: New York Herald, October 21, 1859. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/146/mode/2up  

Source: Horace Greeley, New-York Daily Tribune, March 9, 1859. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/74/mode/2up  

Source: Senate speech by James Henry Hammond, https://civilwarcauses.org/King%20Cotton%20speech.htm  

Source: William H. Seward, The Irrepressible Conflict: a Speech Delivered at Rochester (1858), 1-7. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/138/mode/2up  

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (1894), I, 240-243. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/136/mode/2up  

Source: Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1857), http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/impendingcrisissouthhelper.html

Source: Thomas H. Benton, Historical and Legal Examination . . . of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott Case (1857), 4-96. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/132/mode/2up  

Source: Dred Scott v. Sandford, in Samuel F. Miller, Reports of Decisions in the Supreme Court of the United States (1875), II, 6-56. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/126/mode/2up  

Source: Thomas H. Gladstone, The Englishman in Kansas; or, Squatter Life and Border Warfare (1857), 22-66. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/114/mode/2up  

Source: John Wannuaucon Quinney, From Great Documents in American Indian History, Edited by Moquin, Wayne and Charles Van Doren (1973). History is a Weapon, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/johnquinney1854fourthofjulyaddress.html